Integrated circuit devices must be designed so that they provide enough current to accomplish the tasks logically assigned to them and they must accomplish these tasks without drawing an inordinate amount of power. There is a direct design tradeoff between drive current and leakage current in the design of an electronic system. A device such as a transistor that is designed to provide a fast switching operation and designed to provide a large amount of current will also unfortunately result in an unacceptable amount of leakage current when the device is turned off. This leakage current can negatively affect the power consumption of the entire device.
To address the leakage current, prior techniques have used series resistors and current limiting devices in the current path of such transistors. The problem is that these devices and other techniques are not always necessary. Transistors that have excessively high leakage current do not consistently appear. The characteristics of these transistors are dependent upon process variations and sometimes the operating environments in which the transistors are placed. In cases where the transistors do not have an excessively large leakage currents or for applications where such leakage current is not of primary concern, the presence of the current limiting devices unnecessarily impedes the speed and operational capabilities in the integrated system.